Animal Research

Many extinct creatures, including killer theropod dinosaurs like the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex, had serrated teeth, with jagged cutting edges to help them chew through flesh. Some years ago scientists noticed that theropods also had some unusual structures inside their teeth: interconnected cracks and voids that many thought must have been wear and tear from the act of eating hard stuff, like bones. But new research, published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, proposes another explanation for those structures -- that they were present in teeth before they even erupted from dinosaurs' gums, and that they played a key role in maintaining the fearsome, knife-like serrated edge...

Related "Animal Research" Articles

Many extinct creatures, including killer theropod dinosaurs like the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex, had serrated teeth, with jagged cutting edges to help them chew through flesh. Some years ago scientists noticed that theropods also had some unusual...

The debate over the treatment of killer whales at SeaWorld has turned into a battle over scientific studies now that a new report has concluded that whales showcased at the marine-themed parks live just as long as whales in the wild.
The peer-reviewed...

How do giant pandas get by on a diet that consists almost entirely of bamboo? They manage to expend only 38% of the energy typical of animals their size, new research shows.
Scientists in China made detailed measurements of the energy used by five...

Domestic cats may be cute and cuddly, but they’re also adept hunters. In the United States, cats kill billions of birds and small mammals a year, experts say.
But where does all this carnage happen?
Near people’s houses, a new study suggests. And not...

Move over, parrots. Here’s another bird with some impressive "language" skills: The chestnut-crowned babbler. Scientists studying the social birds have discovered that they can rearrange meaningless sounds in their calls to form different,...

Perhaps baboons should run for office. Researchers tracking a troop of wild olive baboons have found that the primates make travel decisions democratically when disagreements arise over which direction to go.
The findings, published in the journal...

The question of whether you are a righty or a lefty no longer applies just to humans and great apes. It turns out that kangaroos prefer one hand over the other as well.
Most kangaroos prefer to use their left hand to pick up leaves, move food...

Scientists analyzing fragments of poorly preserved dinosaur bones excavated more than a century ago have discovered what appear to be red blood cells and collagen fibers, soft tissues that thus far have only found rarely, on extremely well-preserved...

At a UC Berkeley laboratory, engineers are building cockroach-like robots with a noble purpose — search and rescue.
Smaller than the palm of a hand and weighing an ounce, the robots are fast, nimble, and equipped with microphones and thermostats to...

When a court hearing was ordered to determine whether two chimpanzees, named Hercules and Leo, are being “unlawfully detained” by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the primates (and their lawyers) made a bit of history. No, New York State...

About one in six species now alive on the planet could become extinct as a result of climate change, according to a study published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
If present trends continue, the Earth’s temperature will wind up 4.3 degrees...

A new dinosaur fossil from China has thrown paleontologists for a loop. The strange dinosaur has bony wing-like features that are wildly different from those of its close flying relatives and instead look more like those of a flying squirrel or a bat.
...

If finned swimming animals evolved in an ocean on an alien world, what would they look like? Quite possibly a lot like the ones on Earth, a team of researchers says.
A new study that examined certain swimming species’ motion in the ocean found a...

Paleontologists have unearthed a strange new species of dinosaur that is unlike anything they have seen before.
The newly described Chilesaurus diegosuarezi was an ostrich-size dinosaur that walked upright like a Tyrannosaurus rex but...

In what may be a first for a long-extinct non-human animal -- and certainly for an extinct creature of such stature -- scientists have assembled the complete genome of the woolly mammoth, gaining insight into why the last surviving population of the great...

Scientists have found 30 never-before-seen species of flies buzzing about in the city of Los Angeles.
The discovery suggests that we know less about the diversity of our winged neighbors than was previously thought.
The flies are all...

The California sea lion crisis has deepened as the number of abandoned, sickly pups continues to increase and the Pacific Ocean becomes warmer.
To date, nearly 1,800 sea lions found stranded on California beaches have been admitted to rehabilitation...

Florida has a python problem, and it may be worse than anyone thought.
In a new study, researchers found that the voracious appetite of the Burmese python can outpace even the reproductive speed of the marsh rabbit, a small brown bunny that seems to have...

Scientists studying chameleon skin have discovered the secret to the lizards' color-changing prowess: Rather than relying purely on pigments, the animals use photonic nanocrystals in their skin to manipulate light with exquisite precision.
The...

What does an ocean-going titaness do after she has the lost the ability to bear young?
Well, for starters, she goes on living--sometimes past the ripe old age of 90, while male killer whales over 50 are dying off in droves. Throughout the animal kingdom,...